Remember When People Laughed About This?

[Guest MikeSC]

One of the complaints when the Supreme Court overturned the laws against sodomy in TX was that it would open the door to legalize such things as polygamy and the like.

 

The people who stated this were laughed at and referred to as alarmists making specious slippery slope arguments.

 

Seems that the fears are becoming more believable:

Polygamy laws expose our own hypocrisy

By Jonathan Turley

Tom Green is an American polygamist. This month, he will appeal his conviction in Utah for that offense to the United States Supreme Court, in a case that could redefine the limits of marriage, privacy and religious freedom.

 

If the court agrees to take the case, it would be forced to confront a 126-year-old decision allowing states to criminalize polygamy that few would find credible today, even as they reject the practice. And it could be forced to address glaring contradictions created in recent decisions of constitutional law.

 

For polygamists, it is simply a matter of unequal treatment under the law.

 

Individuals have a recognized constitutional right to engage in any form of consensual sexual relationship with any number of partners. Thus, a person can live with multiple partners and even sire children from different partners so long as they do not marry. However, when that same person accepts a legal commitment for those partners "as a spouse," we jail them.

 

Likewise, someone such as singer Britney Spears can have multiple husbands so long as they are consecutive, not concurrent. Thus, Spears can marry and divorce men in quick succession and become the maven of tabloid covers. Yet if she marries two of the men for life, she will become the matron of a state prison.

 

Religion defines the issue

 

The difference between a polygamist and the follower of an "alternative lifestyle" is often religion. In addition to protecting privacy, the Constitution is supposed to protect the free exercise of religion unless the religious practice injures a third party or causes some public danger.

 

However, in its 1878 opinion in Reynolds vs. United States, the court refused to recognize polygamy as a legitimate religious practice, dismissing it in racist and anti-Mormon terms as "almost exclusively a feature of the life of Asiatic and African people." In later decisions, the court declared polygamy to be "a blot on our civilization" and compared it to human sacrifice and "a return to barbarism." Most tellingly, the court found that the practice is "contrary to the spirit of Christianity and of the civilization which Christianity has produced in the Western World."

 

Contrary to the court's statements, the practice of polygamy is actually one of the common threads between Christians, Jews and Muslims.

 

Deuteronomy contains a rule for the division of property in polygamist marriages. Old Testament figures such as Abraham, David, Jacob and Solomon were all favored by God and were all polygamists. Solomon truly put the "poly" to polygamy with 700 wives and 300 concubines. Mohammed had 10 wives, though the Koran limits multiple wives to four. Martin Luther at one time accepted polygamy as a practical necessity. Polygamy is still present among Jews in Israel, Yemen and the Mediterranean.

 

Indeed, studies have found polygamy present in 78% of the world's cultures, including some Native American tribes. (While most are polygynists — with one man and multiple women — there are polyandrists in Nepal and Tibet in which one woman has multiple male spouses.) As many as 50,000 polygamists live in the United States.

 

Given this history and the long religious traditions, it cannot be seriously denied that polygamy is a legitimate religious belief. Since polygamy is a criminal offense, polygamists do not seek marriage licenses. However, even living as married can send you to prison. Prosecutors have asked courts to declare a person as married under common law and then convicted them of polygamy.

 

The Green case

 

This is what happened in the case of Green, who was sentenced to five years to life in prison. In his case, the state first used the common law to classify Green and four women as constructively married — even though they never sought a license. Green was then convicted of polygamy.

 

While the justifications have changed over the years, the most common argument today in favor of a criminal ban is that underage girls have been coerced into polygamist marriages. There are indeed such cases. However, banning polygamy is no more a solution to child abuse than banning marriage would be a solution to spousal abuse. The country has laws to punish pedophiles and there is no religious exception to those laws.

 

In Green's case, he was shown to have "married" a 13-year-old girl. If Green had relations with her, he is a pedophile and was properly prosecuted for a child sex crime — just as a person in a monogamous marriage would be prosecuted.

 

The First Amendment was designed to protect the least popular and least powerful among us. When the high court struck down anti-sodomy laws in Lawrence vs. Texas, we ended decades of the use of criminal laws to persecute gays. However, this recent change was brought about in part by the greater acceptance of gay men and lesbians into society, including openly gay politicians and popular TV characters.

 

Such a day of social acceptance will never come for polygamists. It is unlikely that any network is going to air The Polygamist Eye for the Monogamist Guy or add a polygamist twist to Everyone Loves Raymond. No matter. The rights of polygamists should not be based on popularity, but principle.

 

I personally detest polygamy. Yet if we yield to our impulse and single out one hated minority, the First Amendment becomes little more than hype and we become little more than hypocrites. For my part, I would rather have a neighbor with different spouses than a country with different standards for its citizens.

 

I know I can educate my three sons about the importance of monogamy, but hypocrisy can leave a more lasting impression.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/colum...03-turley_x.htm

 

ACLU is also attacking Virginia's anti-adultery laws.

-=Mike

[Dr. Tom 0]

The article touches on the problem here: religion. Because the popular religions in this country rigidly define marriage , marriage has a rigid definition. Personally, I don't care what consenting adults do in the privacy of their own homes. As long as all parties involved consent, I don't see the need for polygamy to be illegal.

[Guest MikeSC]

I feel legalizing it will simply cause more societal problems than we already have in this country. Marriage has already been pretty well bitch-slapped since the origins of "no-fault divorce" --- this will only take a bad problem and make it much worse.

-=Mike

[Dr. Tom 0]

Marriage has had a ~50% failure rate for some time now. The sanctity is long over.

[Guest MikeSC]

Marriage has had a ~50% failure rate for some time now. The sanctity is long over.

But what were the rates before "no-fault divorce" took off back in the 60's?

 

Making a problem worse is not in our best interests.

-=Mike

[Rob E Dangerously 0]

Were people staying married in unhappy situations back in the 50s, or do people just get divorced at random now? Was the low divorce rate a sign that there were tons of happy marriages?

 

Part of the reason for high divorce rates should be obvious.. people are impulsive and they have poor luck at picking someone else who they can grow old with. Instead, they pick someone based more on looks or money, not on compatibility.

[Guest Smell the ratings!!!]

"the people" were laughed at because no one cares who's married to who for how long at what time. Even if they like it in the pooper.

[Guest Shoes Head]

Marriage is an ancient institution where the original purpose was to allow two (and sometimes more) people to have sex without shame.

 

Now you can fuck a horse on film without shame. Marriage has no sanctity, nor purpose in western society.

[NoCalMike 0]

So is it safe to say Marriage is a 400 year experience gone wrong? hehehe....

[Guest Shoes Head]

Not really. It's a great idea on paper. An all knowing godhead wants to protect his creation from the hundreds of emotional and physical vices of casual sex - and thus commands marriage.

 

Unfortunately if said "god" doesn't exist, the idea falls flat.

 

EDIT: Grammar.

[Guest SP-1]

So is it safe to say Marriage is a 400 year experience gone wrong? hehehe....

No. It's safe to say that society has continued the decline it's almost always been in.

[Spicy McHaggis 0]

Don't humans suck.

 

 

I actually agree with Tom here ... it should be legal if it's b/t consenting adults.

[Lando Griffin 0]

As long as they stop forcing teenage girls into their harems, who cares? Unfortunately, I would be surprised if that happened.

[Special K 0]

Here's the thing: Marriage is a legal status granted to people. Sex is not.

 

Doing away with the sodomy laws did not mean the gov't endorsed homosexuality. It just meant they could get it on. The sodomy laws open the gate for 3-ways to be legal, not polygamy. That's a different can of worms.

 

The sodomy laws have essentially no relation to the marriage laws.

 

I think the link you're trying to draw between the two is pretty weak, Mike.

[Special K 0]

C'mon, Mike. I enjoy debating you, and I think I made a point.

[NoCalMike 0]

So is it safe to say Marriage is a 400 year experience gone wrong?  hehehe....

No. It's safe to say that society has continued the decline it's almost always been in.

or smartening up to the fabrications via a book of fabels.

[Special K 0]

Will nobody challenge that marriage laws and sex laws are completely separate entities? Because I consider this debate over, see: the moot point.

[kkktookmybabyaway 0]

WAAAAAH! Can we please stop with the flaming already?...

[CheesalaIsGood 0]

Marriage has had a ~50% failure rate for some time now.  The sanctity is long over.

But what were the rates before "no-fault divorce" took off back in the 60's?

 

Making a problem worse is not in our best interests.

-=Mike

Look, you can't regualte every behavior! It just can't be enforced. What do you want? Some cop to write someone a ticket for "doing it in the naughty place?" (Bill Maher)

 

C'mon! Do yourself a favor and look the other way.

[Guest MikeSC]

Marriage has had a ~50% failure rate for some time now.  The sanctity is long over.

But what were the rates before "no-fault divorce" took off back in the 60's?

 

Making a problem worse is not in our best interests.

-=Mike

Look, you can't regualte every behavior! It just can't be enforced. What do you want? Some cop to write someone a ticket for "doing it in the naughty place?" (Bill Maher)

 

C'mon! Do yourself a favor and look the other way.

Are you using Bill Maher as a quotable person?

 

What, Carrot Top too funny?

 

Just say you have no point, rather than subject the rest of us to the shitty ramblings of the about-as-funny-as-Whoopi Goldberg Bill Maher.

-=Mike

[Dr. Tom 0]

But what were the rates before "no-fault divorce" took off back in the 60's?

Who cares? People should be free to marry whoever they want. If they're both consenting adults, what business is it of anyone else's? If you take religion out of the equation, marriage, as a social institution, will be subject to the whims and changes of society. I have no problems with this, nor with gay marriage, polygamy, etc. As long as it's all between consenting adults, I can't be bothered to care.